- Kazakhstan: Russian regime launches first rocket from repaired Baikonur launch pad
Source: Reuters
“Russia launched a Soyuz rocket from a repaired launch pad at its Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday, restoring its capability to fly to the International Space Station for the first time since the launch pad was damaged last year. At 1200 GMT, a Soyuz-2.1a rocket carrying the Progress MS-33 cargo spacecraft lifted off and was placed into orbit, Russia’s space agency said. The spacecraft is expected to dock with the International Space Station on March 24. The launch pad had been out of commission since it was badly damaged in November when a Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft with two Russian cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut on board blasted off. No one was hurt and the crew safely reached the space station, but the incident deprived Russia of its sole means of sending crew or cargo back to the ISS for months.” (03/22/26)
- Federal judge reverses Pentagon press restrictions
Source: Politico
“The Trump administration violated the Constitution when it sought to restrict press access to the Pentagon and limit what reporters could cover, a federal judge ruled Friday. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman granted a request from The New York Times to void the Pentagon’s press credential policy on grounds it violated the First and Fifth Amendment, rejecting the government’s argument that the restrictions were needed to prevent the disclosure of classified information. … The ruling, which comes as journalists around the world seek information about the war in Iran, rolls back a highly aggressive attack on press freedom implemented last year by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host who has had a strained relationship with the media.” (03/20/26)
- Trump Wants to Destroy Anthropic Because It Is Doing Congress’s Job of Preventing Him from Abusing AI
Source: The UnPopulist
by Adam Conner“Over the last two weeks, the Department of Defense has initiated two wars: one against a nation with a long history of conflict with the United States; the other against one of the fastest-growing new companies in American history: Anthropic, the frontier artificial intelligence lab behind the popular Claude model. The DOD has effectively declared both Iran and Anthropic to be enemies of America, and though the weapons the DOD is using in each conflict differ dramatically — explosive missiles versus bureaucratic legal statutes — the department has made clear in both cases that its objective is to severely damage, if not totally destroy, the enemy. … Why this fight started and how the government has chosen to wage it are two separate questions, and conflating them is one of the major mistakes most coverage of this conflict has made.” (03/21/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trump-wants-to-destroy-anthropic
- Autarky: Terrible at Political Scale, But Great as Individual Self-Defense
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“The war on Iran is temporarily producing the same result that actual US ‘energy independence’ — usually promoted as proposed autarky in the production/sale of oil — would deliver without ‘armies crossing borders.’ Almost all oil and gas produced in the US comes from ‘tight formation production’ — horizontally drilled wells and hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) to extract the stuff from shale . That’s more expensive than just drilling a vertical well and pumping the black gold out, as is done in the Middle East. That’s a ‘competitive disadvantage’ for US oil companies. The only way for US oil production to be profitable is for the price per barrel to be kept artificially high through ‘protectionist’ measures … or war. The US producers can only profit by increasing YOUR costs. At the level of the individual American, on the other hand, a certain amount of ‘energy independence’ — autarky! — makes a good deal of sense.” (03/21/26)
- Immigration Restrictions Restrict Americans’ Liberties
Source: Liberalism.org
by Ilya Somin“The biggest victims of immigration restrictions are the would-be migrants, who are consigned to a lifetime of poverty and oppression simply because they were born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents. But the horrific experience of the second Trump administration highlights how restrictionism also poses a grave threat to the liberty and welfare of native-born citizens. While some of the harms caused to natives are specific to the policies of this administration, many are inherent in the very nature of exclusion and deportation, and they occur even under more conventional presidents. The ultimate solution is to end all or most immigration restrictions, or at least to severely curb them.” (903/20/26)
https://www.liberalism.org/p/immigration-restrictions-restrict-americans-liberties
- The Palestine Context
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman“Much turmoil in the Middle East today is attributable to this overlooked fact: Jewish European descendants of people who had freely chosen to leave ancient Judea/Palestine established a project, Zionism, in the late 19th and early 20th century with the intention of displacing the descendants of Judeans who had chosen to stay. This is a dispute, in other words, between Canaanites who remained — from whom the Palestinian Muslims and Christians descended — and the Canaanites who willingly departed — from whom the Ashkenazi Jews descended. … For both Jewish and Christian Zionists, the alleged Roman exile of the Jews from Judea in the first century CE is a key part of the Zionist property claim, on behalf of all Jews the world over, to the land of Israel. But exile did not happen.” (03/20/26)
https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/tgif-the-palestine-context
- Bluesky raises $100 million but faces a messy reality
Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle“To partisans behind Bluesky, it must have seemed like a gift from the gods when Elon Musk bought Twitter. In short order he changed its name to X, shifted its moderation policies sharply to the right and sent millions of internet refugees searching for a new home. But as the ancients knew, gifts of the gods often come with strings attached. In the two years since Bluesky opened to all comers, the social media app has gained 43 million users, an amazing feat for a company with fewer than 50 full-time employees. That growth got a huge boost from Musk’s antics in the lead-up to the 2024 election, which endowed Bluesky with a base of devoted users — users who skewed heavily progressive and brought with them cancel culture tactics that had flourished on X. Those users are now the platform’s biggest barrier to growth.” (03/22/26)
- You Can’t Make People Cheer For Your Wars After Committing A Live-Streamed Genocide
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“I saw a clip of Fox News war propagandist Sean Hannity solemnly reading a tweet by Atlantic Council fellow Jamie Metzl which said, ‘It is profoundly disturbing that a growing segment of the far left appears to be almost rooting for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime, and other forces fundamentally opposed to the US and our allies. This seems to reflect a corrosive strain of anti-Americanism dressed up in post-colonial theory that risks blinding us to the moral realities of our world and the nature of our adversaries.’ These assholes really thought they could commit a genocide in full view of the entire world for years and then expect everyone cheer for them to win. Of course we’re seeing more ‘anti-Americanism.’ You don’t get to commit horrific atrocities year after year and then cry when the world starts to hate you.” (03/21/26)
- Attacking Iran’s Power Plants Would Be Despicable
Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison“Threatening to damage or destroy power generation for the entire country is outrageous. If the U.S. does this, it will be inflicting collective punishment on the civilian population on a massive scale. Attacking Iran’s power plants would be comparable to Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, and it would be just as despicable.” (03/21/26)
https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/attacking-irans-power-plants-would
- Why Iran won’t collapse
Source: Unherd
by Christopher de Ballaigue“Not a day passes without an official warning of threats to the country’s territorial integrity: code for foreign-funded agitations among the country’s Kurdish, Baluch and Arab minorities. But Iran isn’t in danger of falling apart. It isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq, modern confections of mutually antagonistic groups. Rather, it has a natural coherence based on the supremacy of the Persian language; its geographically logical homeland on the Persian plateau, ringed by seas and mountains; and the Shia Islam to which most Iranians adhere. For centuries, indeed, these strengths have enabled Iran to survive invasions, violent changes of dynasty, famines, tribal uprisings, regicides and years of meddling by imperial Britain and Russia — not to mention the 1979 revolution itself. They will offset the centrifugal forces that Trump seems intent on stimulating. For the true danger to Iran is not disintegration, but implosion.” (03/21/26)
- Let Iran Be Someone Else’s Problem
Source: The American Conservative
by Benjamin H Friedman“The United States is not going to win this war with Iran. The good news is that we do not need to. There was no good reason for the Israeli–U.S. attack in the first place, and American security does not require us to win anything new from Tehran—not the regime change President Donald Trump fantasizes about, not the militarily-crippled Iran his defense secretary describes as the goal, not even the nuclear deal Washington might have had before it chose war. The United States can simply stop. It can declare a phony victory and even call it the ‘unconditional surrender’ Trump demands.” (03/21/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/let-iran-be-someone-elses-problem/
- A year after coming into power, Syria’s ruler faces his defining test in Lebanon
Source: New York Post
by Dan Perry“Since Ahmed al-Sharaa came to power in Damascus last January, a question has hovered in the air: Has Syria truly changed, or merely changed hands Seeking sanctions relief, investment and a measure of international legitimacy, the new leadership, despite its past association with Al Qaeda, has signaled moderation. The symbols of the old regime are gone. The suffocating omnipresence of the Assad state has receded. Cafes have reopened, checkpoints have thinned and Syrians speak more freely. Yes, there have been killings of members of the Druze and the formerly dominant Alawite minorities, which the government denies direct involvement in. But even this mixed picture is no small achievement. The Russia- and Iran-backed Assad regime was not simply authoritarian; it was claustrophobic, built on surveillance, coercion and inherited power. Its collapse created space.” (03/21/26)
- Unattended Baggage, episode 333
Source: Unattended Baggage
“The war is over! Long live the war!” (03/21/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-333-the-war-is-over-long
- System Update, 03/21/26
Source: System Update
“The US and Israel Are Not Winning the War.” (03/21/26)
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/us-israel-losing-the-war-with-glenn